Denise+Holmes

**SUMMARY:** **Denise Holmes, age 25, died December 21, 1970 after an abortion performed at Avalon Hospital in Los Angeles, CA.**

 Denise J. Holmes, a 24-year-old Australian woman living in Texas, decided to undergo a [|safe and legal abortion] at Avalon Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on her way home for Christmas of 1970.

Denise checked into Avalon Hospital (an abortion facility owned by [|Edward Campbell Allred]) on December 21. Denise suffered an amniotic fluid [|embolism] that carried pieces of fetal bone marrow into her lungs. She was pronounced dead by Edward Allred at Avalon at 5pm.

Denise is the first confirmed abortion death at an [|Allred facility], before the [|National Abortion Federation]was founded, with Allred's Family Planning Associates Medical Group as a member.

Other women known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include:


 * [[image:EdwardAllred.jpg align="right" caption="Edward Allred" link="Patricia Chacon"]]Patricia Chacon, age 16, 1984
 * Mary Pena, age 43, 1984
 * Josefina Garcia, age 37, 1985
 * Lanice Dorsey, age 17, 1986
 * Joyce Ortenzio, age 32, 1988
 * Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988
 * Deanna Bell, age 13, 1992
 * Susan Levy, age 30, 1992
 * Christina Mora, age 18, 1994
 * Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, 1995
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Nakia Jorden, 1998
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Maria Leho, 1999
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kimberly Neil, 2000
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Maria Rodriguez, age 22, 2000
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Chanelle Bryant, age 22, 2004

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I suspect that the reason the deaths appear in clusters is because those are years that researchers checked for lawsuits, rather than that these are all the women and girls who died at Allred facilities. Anybody with the time and resources to do so could probably uncover other deaths Allred and his staff have managed to sweep under the carpet.



<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As you can see from the graph below, abortion deaths were falling dramatically before legalization. This steep fall had been in place for decades. To argue that legalization lowered abortion mortality simply isn't supported by the data.

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